Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [65]
The next time those smokers inadvertently see the health warnings, the next time they have a heart flutter or pains in their chest, the next time they’re the only smoker in a group of non-smokers, the next time they are going out and feel anxious because they don’t know if they’ll be able to smoke, those poor smokers will have to continue to pay a fortune for the privilege of poisoning and suffocating themselves to death. And for what? Why do they live this life of slavery and pain? To remove that little empty feeling caused by withdrawing from the previous cigarette, so they can temporarily feel like a non-smoker. This is all smokers are trying to achieve; the state of peace they enjoyed before they ever lit that first cigarette. And what is the only thing preventing them from enjoying that feeling permanently? The cigarette!
The second reason why some ex-smokers (almost always people who have quit using willpower) have pangs on these occasions is because the smoker is doing something (i.e. smoking) and the ex-smoker is not. This can lead to a feeling of deprivation. Get it clear into your mind before you start: it is not non-smokers who are being deprived; it is smokers.
Smokers are deprived of their:
HEALTH
ENERGY
MONEY
SELF-CONFIDENCE
PEACE OF MIND
COURAGE
SELF-ESTEEM
SELF-RESPECT
TRANQUILLITY
FREEDOM
Get out of the habit of envying smokers and start seeing them for the sad, enslaved creatures they really are. I know: I was the world’s worst. That is why you are reading this book, and the ones who cannot face up to this reality, who have to go on kidding themselves, are the most pathetic of all.
You wouldn’t envy a heroin addict. Opiate use kills around 3,000 Americans a year. Nicotine kills over 450,000 Americans and an estimated 5 million worldwide. It has already killed far more people on this planet than all the wars in history combined. Like all drug addiction, yours won’t get better. Each year it will get worse, just as it has already since the first time you smoked. If you don’t enjoy being a smoker today, you’ll enjoy it even less tomorrow. Don’t envy smokers; pity them. Believe me, THEY NEED YOUR PITY.
CHAPTER 30
WILL I PUT ON WEIGHT?
This is another myth about smoking, spread mainly by people trying to quit using willpower and who substitute food for cigarettes. The withdrawal pangs from nicotine are very similar to hunger pangs, so the two are easily confused and some people might eat when they aren’t really hungry. However, whereas eating can relieve a hunger pang, the withdrawal pangs from nicotine can never be satisfied so long as you remain a smoker.
As with any drug, after a while the body builds immunity and the drug ceases to relieve the symptoms that the previous dose created. As soon as we extinguish a cigarette, the nicotine begins to leave the body, so the withdrawal symptoms with their hunger-like pangs return.
The smoker is therefore left with a permanent ‘hunger’ that he can never satisfy. This is why many smokers turn to overeating, heavy drinking and even harder drugs in order to satisfy this perceived ‘void’. As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, the vast majority of alcoholics are smokers. I wonder if this is really a smoking problem disguised as a drink problem.
For the smoker the natural tendency is to start by substituting nicotine for food. During my own nightmare years I got to the stage where I cut out breakfast and lunch entirely. I would chain-smoke during the day. In the later years I would actually look forward to the evenings because I could stop smoking and give my poor lungs some respite from the punishment. However, I would be picking at food all evening. I thought it was hunger, but it was really withdrawal pangs from nicotine. In other words, during the day I would substitute nicotine for food and during the evenings, food for nicotine.